This ongoing campaign of the hacker community is well-intentioned, but I don't think we'll ever get the term "cracker" to stick. Luckily, the term hacker has gradually come to be an umbrella term for a wide set of skills, capable of both good for evil, describing everything from building web apps to cracking DRM to security auditing, as well as the actually nefarious stuff.
(Of course, this ignores the reality that the majority of ne'er-do-wells have very little technical skill, but plenty of existing terms already fit the bill: fraudsters, vandals, thieves, etc.)
made me think of a Vaudeville Villain laughing maniacally while twisting the ends of his waxed moustache and contemplating the fate of his scrambled egg addicted clientèle.... =S
The way that I've seen it develop is that the general public now uses the term "crack" pretty exclusively (in tech terms that is) to mean the breaking of copy protection on proprietary software. Whereas the term "hack" or "hacker" still languishes in the "romanticised" picture of a lone wolf stalking the internet for system vulnerabilities to take advantage of, subvert and abuse an innocent box....
(Of course, this ignores the reality that the majority of ne'er-do-wells have very little technical skill, but plenty of existing terms already fit the bill: fraudsters, vandals, thieves, etc.)